There is a surprising portrait in Uganda’s parliament building. It’s an oil-painted Idi Amin sporting a toothy smile and full military regalia. Amin poses while engaging in his trademark low-down, dual-fisted version of a fist pump.

Normally, it would be no surprise for a tourist to encounter a painting of a country’s former president inside the house of its legislature. But Amin was no ordinary president. He was a brutal dictator. He was allegedly a cannibal who literally ate his opponents and detractors for breakfast. The evidence for Amin’s cannibalism were the corpses of political foes found dangling by their Achilles tendons, after he was deposed, from meat hooks inside of a walk-in refrigerator at his compound.

Earlier this year a British journalist—let’s call him Ian Smith because, as you’ll see, disclosing his identity might preclude him from ever visiting Uganda again—went to the Chamber of Parliament in Kampala and took photos of some of the building’s more interesting features. The place was a ghost town at the time thanks to a special event where members of parliament were then gathered.

“That made it easy for me to steal the document,” recalls Smith.

The document he stole is titled: “Protect our young people from homosexuality: Debate and pass the anti-homosexuality bill now!”

Smith took the document from the Press Office at Parliament when the secretary wasn’t looking. It contains morbid images, such as one that may be posed or altered to depict a human figure lying on a bed with his or her intestines literally extruding onto a bed from his or her rectum.

The photo purports to be of a young man named Turyamureeba Wycliffe, who supposedly died from complications of “fisting” and tuberculosis (supposedly also brought on as a result of his homosexuality).

Mercifully and perhaps manipulatively, the document also includes a photo of Wycliffe in far happier and healthier days sitting in a decidedly effeminate posture. The juxtaposed imagery more subtly drives home the same point the brief hammers out in writing as, “Attention Ugandan MPs and parents: If you don’t do something about your gay (or gay-acting) kid, he’ll end up in a grave with his guts hanging out, just like this one did in Katungu Village.“

Uganda’s relatively newfound hatred for homosexuality is directly traceable to American missionaries who penetrated the country’s mindset by providing assistance in the fight against the east African AIDS epidemic.

A document obtained by the Blade was stolen from the Uganda Parliament’s pressroom and contains shocking claims about homosexuality. (Photo courtesy Thom Senzee)

Uganda, which not so long ago seemed equal to Kenya and South Africa as a symbol of hope that liberal democracies could flourish on the African continent, been indoctrinated into fervent homophobia by American evangelical diehards.

Their efforts have not only won followers in east Africa. Some argue the work of rightwing religious organizations with ties to people like former governors and Fox News celebrities, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, has created a murderous environment for LGBT Ugandans.

David Kato, a Ugandan LGBT rights activist, was beaten to death after winning a lawsuit against a Ugandan magazine called “Rolling Stone” (no connection to the American publication of the same name) for publishing a list of names and photographs of 100 LGBT-rights leaders, calling for their execution. The article was a welcomed “calling out of perpetrators” for anti-homosexuality groups in Uganda, such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values (CAMOVA), which claims authorship of the aforementioned document, and the Family Life Network. While there is no proof that Kato’s death was connected to the magazine article, the New York Times reported that Kato “knew he was a marked man.”

However, Kato’s surviving friend, the officer of a group called Sexual Minorities-Uganda (SMUG), Frank Mugisha, makes no bones about American evangelicals’ role in creating a terrorized environment for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in Uganda.

“Most of the propaganda can be traced to U.S evangelists,” he told the Washington Blade. “They have been the most visible in Uganda.”

But it wasn’t always this way, according to Mugisha, who in 2011 received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights.

“The religious propaganda is traced back from the late ‘90s—especially in Uganda where missionaries came in to do HIV/AIDS work,” he said. “But they became more visible in 2000.”

Mugisha said the first time he saw the CAMOVA brief was when the Blade supplied it to him via email. He found it disgusting, but not surprising. In fact, he says, Uganda’s powerful, American-connected religious right has a firm grip on the ears of members of parliament.

“Our members of parliament go to church a lot. They interact with our church leaders. Politics in Uganda are centered around the church. So yes, the politicians unfortunately believe all these things.”

For journalist Ian Smith, the CAMOVA brief begged to be snatched for exposure in the media.

“I didn’t feel disgusted when I saw it sitting there in the press room,” Smith recalls. “I genuinely thought it was comical. Then, of course, you think more deeply into it and you realize, these people really believe this absurd rubbish.”

Multiple attempts to obtain comment about the document via the email address noted as contact information for the document’s author(s) yielded no response. Attempts to obtain reactions to the document from members of the Ugandan Parliament were also unsuccessful. According to Mugisha, there is little support for LGBT people among Uganda’s parliamentarians. But, he says, there is some.

“Yes there is,” he said. “But it’s very minimal; and most of the members of parliament are not comfortable giving us support in public. If they do support us they would rather it remains quiet.”

That means his and his colleagues’ work is lonely and dangerous. Most support comes from outside the country—from Americans and Europeans. What little support Sexual Minorities-Uganda gets from allies inside the country comes cloaked in secrecy.

“We do advocacy every day,” he says. “It happens at different levels. I spend half of my time in Uganda in meetings with different political leaders at all levels—from local leaders to national leaders. I lobby government, non-government organizations and civil society, trying to encourage them to work with SMUG.”

LGBT-rights advocates in Uganda and outside of the country blame the most recent, most radical and most violent anti-LGBT propaganda and homophobic activity in east Africa on a seminar organized by Ugandan Stephen Langa.

According to the New York Times, in 2009, Langa invited three prominent American evangelical Christian ministers to speak to Ugandan parents about the supposed threat of recruitment of their children by leaders of the so-called homosexual agenda for all kinds of terrible purposes.

At least one of the three was associated with discredited and recently shuttered “conversion-therapy” purveyor, Exodus International.

Another of the American evangelists blamed for setting in motion Uganda’s anti-gay hysteria with the 2009 seminar, entitled “Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda,” is Scott Lively.

Lively is author of a “gay-proofing” book for parents who fear having a gay child, which has been panned by mainstream psychology practitioners as “psychobabble” and “quackery.”

Mugisha says LGBT people in his country still live in constant fear and danger as a result of the seminar held more than four years ago.

“What I can say is that the Family Life Network and the anti-gay groups in Uganda have spread so much propaganda, which in turn has caused fear within the Uganda people,” he said. “This fear has brought hatred toward known and openly gay persons in Uganda, hence increasing the homophobia and hate crimes.”

The good news is that the anti-homosexuality bill, which the CAMOVA brief implored the Ugandan Parliament to pass last year, has not passed. If it had passed in its original form, homosexuality would have been punishable by death (the law was later rewritten to specify life in prison as the penalty for some convictions of homosexuality).

Further good news, according to Ian Smith, is the possibility that even the document presented to MPs by the homophobic Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values in December 2012 may itself represent a silver lining of sorts.

“You would have thought all of their work of sewing hate was well done by now,” says Smith. “You wouldn’t think they would feel the need to go to such lengths as creating and passing about such a load of rubbish as this document.”

Perhaps, he says, the document in question is a sign of a cracking at the seams of the anti-homosexuality lobby in Uganda.

“Clearly there’s a feeling among them that they have not succeeded in convincing people that gay people are bad for Uganda.”

Was there ever a time in east Africa when LGBT people could live without fear of harassment, beatings and murder? According to Mugisha, there were indeed far better times.

“I would say all the way back before the British came and colonized us,” Mugisha said. “LGBT people were free. But more recently, before the coming of the evangelicals—especially the U.S. evangelicals.”

“With the dialogue now and people talking about gay rights, we hope that things will change,” he said.

Even without passage of the anti-homosexuality law, homosexual acts are still against the law in Uganda, though Mugisha remains optimistic that change is coming.

“I think that there is a possibility that homosexuality will be decriminalized soon,” said Mugisha. “And the sodomy laws may be removed.”

Until then, Mugisha and myriad others in Uganda and across east Africa simply focus on surviving while working for change.

“SMUG can exist,” he said. “We are doing nothing illegal [and] we can exist in Uganda as an association. But we have to be careful. As an openly gay man, I can exist. But also, I have to be careful and take precautions some times.”

I am a Ugandan, born and raised and it just kills me how much these so called politicians and religious leaders preach of “Love thy Neighbour” when at the same time they spread so much hatred….In a religious sermon i once heard, the preacher said ” We are to love our brothers and sisters but we need to be careful about the gays” inotherwords neigbour doesnt include gays as they preach it…..Am grateful this story has come to light and we have a clue of what those yuppies think of gays behind closed parliamentary doors. I will share it with everyone and when a time comes we will have to be strong together……Kudos

Is Uganda a country or a joke! these politicians are like kids! where are the sources of the text written above? Poor Ugandan gays :( I hope people sometime soon realize their mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

Fear and ignorance about non-heterosexual orientation in Uganda are not new. Prior to the current distatsteful antipathy, Ugandans were NOT really more tolerant. I had to leave a certain school in Uganda 40 years ago because of a friendship I was involved in, which wasn’t even sexual, but was perceived to be.. I think the present crisis is making us a bit romantic or nostalgic for what never was. Pain makes us do stuff like that.

First of all Ugandans don’t understand now, and didnt even before,( no matter what they say) what being gay means. How can you be tolerant of what you don’t understand.The whole subject was very much a taboo, which meant that it fell beneath the radar of any kind of discussions, whether for or against, in the media, parliament, on the streets or in the home. The wonderful thing about taboo is that it SILENCES EVERYONE on both sides of the discussion equally.Thats why there was less harrassment, at least of the verbal kind, before now.

Ugandan silence however, was never pregnant with the milk of human kindness! We might have presumed that Ugandans were more tolerant before the evangelicals parachuted in with homophobic messages, actually they were neither tolerant nor intolerant. It is into this APPARENTLY suspended judgement about LGBTs that Scott Lively et all were able to cast their inimical seeds of lies and hate couched in religious terms. All this has now manifested to us what was already there-in potentia. Strong dislike of LGBTIs.

Thank you for this. A few years ago I was reading the Blade at a bar in my neighborhood, and "The Colonel" walked up to me and said; "If some people knew the Ambassador was sitting next to a gay man at a bar you both may be killed". Not sure what country the Ambassador was from, but it was an African country, and he is a nice guy.

Those morons in Uganda can't even feed themselves. Maybe they should spend their scarce resources on something more important than imprisoning consenting adults who engage in a relationship with someone of the same sex. It is patently unfair that gays and their loved ones should be devastated by discriminatory actions, while the bigots and their loved ones go about enjoying their lives as if nothing has happened. It's time to start making bigots pay for the discriminatory actions they take. When they have to pay a price, they might start to rethink their actions. If even one homosexual is imprisoned or harmed in Uganda, I say we start attacking heterosexual Ugandans in our countries. Start with embassy personnel. Then target Yoweri Museveni, Rebecca Kadaga, Pastor Martin Ssempa, Scott Lively, Caleb Brundidge, Don Schmierer, David Bahati, Rick Warren, Tony Perkins, and their loved ones.
Sure would be a shame if the parliament building burned down with all those bigots in it.

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What surprises me is that they take sexual acts that are not limited to gay people or even men and then use that to show homosexuality is bad. As if all gay people engage in these acts and no one else does. That alone is laughable, but the fact that simple common sense truth escapes them.

I think the best approach for saving Uganda is not focusing on homosexuality at all. That is a fools game, because it leaves the underlying disease in place. Gays are the victims of these memes only because the evangelical movement desires power in this countries.

The best approach is to focus on their religious leaders and their dark truths. White foreigners coming to take the money, land, and self rule away from the African people. A mission to indoctrinate their young into foreign cult practices that often leave their leaders soaking in tubs of gilded ivory while poor black youth attend to them. Once again back take their young to serve them in distant lands. Images of the corrupt black officials who look the other way while hard working African families are pushed off their land, their children stolen or corrupted, and their right to protest to their now distance overlords stripped away. Exposing the revelations of the evangelical manifestos that states their mission to achieve these wicked goals. These sort of memes are the ones that will vaporize that movement not focusing on gays. Gays are simply a means to an end for these beasts.

Now see how reframing an argument in terms of fear and terror works? I bet you got mad and annoyed reading that last passage. I will tell you this. This is how these so called men of god work in those places and it will take fire to stop fire.